The assignment is to write a short essay (675 words at the longest) that makes and supports an argument. It can be about any of our course texts so far,
The assignment is to write a short essay (675 words at the longest) that makes and supports an argument. It can be about any of our course texts so far, and it can be on any aspect of your chosen text as long as it does not merely rehash class discussion. You’ll write two of these papers over the course of the semester. Each will be graded and can be rewritten for a new grade.
The goal of this assignment is twofold: on the reading side, to give you a chance to develop your thinking about some aspect of our texts that interests you; on the writing side, to practice argumentation (i.e., crafting, stating, and advancing an argument), concision, and accurate word choice.
The main argument of your paper is your “thesis,” and the introductory statement of your main argument is your “thesis statement.” In order to practice recognizing which part of what you want to say is your main argument (as opposed to set-up or a supporting argument), please put your thesis statement in boldface. An argument, for present purposes, is a claim that someone could disagree with. This is different from an observation, which is irrefutable. Your thesis, a little counter-intuitively, should NOT be irrefutable. If it is, that means it doesn’t wager enough, i.e., doesn’t pull enough critical weight. (NB: a thesis statement can be more than one sentence, but it should still be concise and recognizable. It should not be a whole paragraph.)
You are also welcome to use one of the arguments I’ve listed below as “exemplary thesis,” or your own versions of these, as long as you make sure the analysis is your own.
Observation (non-exemplary thesis):
“William Steig’s Shrek! is structured around a series of allusions to familiar fairy-tale tropes.”
“Travel is a major theme of “The Story of Sinuhe.”
“In The Odyssey, the relationship between Gods and mortals is complex and variable, ranging from extreme friendliness to cruel punishment.”
Argument (exemplary thesis):
“In the children’s book Shrek!, William Steig uses inverted or altered tropes familiar from traditional fairy-tales to illustrate a widely accepted but indispensable moral about self-esteem without lapsing into triteness, cloyingness, or preachiness.”
“In ‘The Story of Sinuhe,’ references to the five senses, especially sight and hearing, are used to differentiate between order and chaos.”
“In The Odyssey, deities’ attitudes toward particular mortals often have more to do with their relationships to one another than with the mortals themselves.”
These theses have the classic form of a literary-critical argument: [The text brings about X effect by doing Y]. This formula doesn’t sound like much, but it can accommodate ideas of great interest, beauty, and variety. By investigating HOW texts do what they do, we end up discussing things of profound human concern, since texts are themselves human instruments and artifacts. You’re welcome to make arguments that don’t take this form, but remember that something needn’t be reductive, boring, or limited just because it fits a formula.
Please put your main argument as close to the beginning of the paper as possible. If there’s any “suspense” in the unfolding of a paper, it should be about HOW you’re going to pull off what you wager, not WHAT you are arguing. The reader should be able to follow you in lockstep. They should always know “where” in your argument they are at any given point. Small courtesies of “sign-posting” as needed and within reason (“as I will show”; “more on this subject shortly”) can help.
First-person pronouns are fine with me provided that your reasoning is even-handed. Please use the present tense when related events from the text (a convention known as the “present tense of literature,” which is arbitrary but useful in avoiding confusion).
Titles should be clear and specific:
Not “William Steig’s Shrek! as Pastiche of Fairy-Tale Tropes,” but, for example, “Inverting Cliché to Avoid Cliché: The Moral of William Steig’s Shrek!”
Not “The Association of Masculinity with Warfare in The Odyssey,” but “Implications of the Male Gendering of Warfare in The Odyssey for the Goddess Athena’s Role as Military Strategist.”
In the model paper I’ve written and attached to this assignment, I’ve aimed to make an argument in the [text brings about X by doing Y] form. It can definitely be disagreed with—a friend I showed it to agreed with my conclusion but disagreed with my reading of certain plot elements. I tried to give the paper a title that makes clear exactly what it’s about, even at the slight expense of stylistic elegance. The thesis of the paper (in boldface) isn’t held back but stated right upfront so that the reader has the benefit of knowing what I’m driving at the whole time they’re reading. The conclusion is the least important part, mostly a chance to sum things up, provide a sense of closure, and elaborate without adding anything that substantially changes the argument. Of course, you get to decide how well my attempt meets these goals!
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